Marketing Preventive Health to Baby Boomers: What if Unhealthy Lifestyles are Attributable to the Counterculture?

Abstract

The boom generation is aging. Research has found that aging boomers are more vulnerable to mental and physical health problems and that adoption of healthy lifestyles may be a game changer for preventive health marketing to deliver health and quality of life. While Rahtz and Szykman’s (2008) model focuses on educating aging boomers with preventive health knowledge to facilitate lifestyle change, unhealthy lifestyles entrenched in the culture of the Woodstock generation may be more resistant to change. Drawing on the metaphor of cultural capital, we theorize that Counterculture lifestyles in different fields are intricately intertwined symbolic elements organized by an anti-establishment habitus and, as such, should be naturally correlated and capable of predicting one another. Data analysis confirmed that withdrawal from institutional religion as a defiant lifestyle in the spiritual field four or five decades ago is associated with alcohol excess and cigarette smoking among aging boomers in 2016. Rahtz and Szykman’s (2008) model was modified to include withdrawal from institutional religion to better understand its impact on lifestyle change, health, and quality of life. Implications for marketing preventive health to aging boomers were also discussed.